I guess I flaked.

I heard this from Frank, my old agent. We have been figuring out a dinner together for the last few weeks and between his busy schedule and my lack of one, we rescheduled three times.  The last time he said, jokingly, "I flaked"(as in corn flakes).  I learned that this is the new answer when you postpone or miss a meeting or lunch or don't call someone back. 

Frank meant it as a joke, but I realized it applies to a lot of people today.  Like Dane, the Manitoba producer, I've called him several times and each time he had to go but promised to call back, but did not.  I mentioned it to the sultry Rachel from Eh Channel, who said he does it to her too, and I spoke to another producer who's dealing with him and... yes, he says Dane is a little slow on answering.

My friend Paul Lynch says it's basically that they really don't need you for anything at the moment, and when they do, they'll call back. This is basically a GenY thing, or a blend of Gen X and whomever is 22 now. And I always wonder why they bother having phones and texting and tweets and what comes next if they don't return calls. 

To be fair, Dane is in preproduction on a movie and is busy so I give him a little slack.  But some years ago I was writing a script for Phil Borsos, who also failed Banff School of Fine Arts film school, and who went on to a major career until he passed away at 41. Phil was making Bethune, a movie about a Canadian doctor in China in the 30's when Mao was just becoming the big guy. The movie, starring Donald Sutherland was, by all accounts, a horrible film shoot. 

The Chinese promised everything, crews, studios and camera gear but when they got there very little ever appeared. Even the food was bad. The majority of the crew came from Canada and at one point, actually were ready to walk off and go back to Canada unless caterers came in for real food. They won and it cost overages in the budget.

But back to Phil. He would call me at least once, sometimes twice, from China to Toronto to discuss the screenplay and tell me horror stories. This while he was in the middle of the difficult production.  And if this is the generation of multi-tasking, they sure aren't champions of it.

Multi-tasking isn't really all that hard anyways, and according to research on the subject, we really don't multi-task at all. What we do is coordinate our actions, one following the other, not actually at the same time.  Real multi-tasking is doing two or three things at the same time. 

Those of you old enough remember that old bit where you rub your tummy one direction and rub your head in the opposite direction at the same time. Try it, it's not easy and that's only two things at the same time. That's real multi-tasking, so when you're working on your computer and someone calls and you answer and work on the computer at the same time, that's not really multi-tasking, unless you're talking and typing an important document at exactly the same time. What happens is basically one job defers to the other one, you talk and stop typing, listen and type.
Where does this take us?


Is Paul right?

Do people not return our calls because we're not important enough at that time and space? And if that is so, what does that make them? I return every call I get, every email, I don't tweet or Facebook, although I allegedly have a Facebook page but never try to find it. But that probably comes from my early career in TV news, where I learned  how to compartmentalize my jobs, 10 minutes for this, 5 minutes for that, 2 hours for something else.

I read that Bill Clinton would do that also, although compartmentalizing world peace, the wrath of Republicans, his... ah... private life, and creating a budget surplus is a little more important than me Tivo'ing Letterman while watching Charley Rose and eating popcorn.


I know the calls will start coming back. 


Any day now.

"I am interested..."

 
It was an email that read simply:      

"I am interested and I would estimate we can provide through the Manitoba tax credits, and equity programs, approx 40% plus of the budget.  If you like, we can talk early next week and go the details. "

Short and sweet as they say.  Seconds before the email appeared I saw the sender's name and realized it was one of the Canadian producers who might be considering working with us.  My first feeling was that it was good. But my skepticism crept in. 

He's passing.

But something told me different.  Most companies don't bother to tell you they're passing on your project these days, they just stop communicating.  Maybe he was one of the nice ones who still has some class and wanted to tell you in person that he is passing.  I clicked on the email and as it opened I scanned the sentences for one good word, it took all of 2 seconds. 

"I am interested."

 That's all I needed, and I reread it to get the entire message.  Then I read it a third time.  We did it.  Shirley and I did it. 

We have a movie. 

With Manitoba's minimum of 40% and our initial investor's 50% it suddenly became a reality. I waited for awhile before I would tell Shirley, I wanted to be absolutely certain of what he was saying.  I remembered that Rachel the movie channel exec (Eh Channel)  had asked the producer to look at my screenplay.  I sent a package of both the proposal and the screenplay as I have done to at least 50 other people of whom some never responded and some liked it but weren't interested and some just weren't interested.  Now we had someone who was. 

I knew what he would be doing, using tax credits in Manitoba which can be as high as 65% tax credit on labor from Manitoba.  For every crewmember, actor, driver, caterer, virtually everyone  except Shirley and an American actor, we got back 65 cents on the dollar. 

I think I must have read that message a half dozen times, putting different interpretations ton it, stepping away and walking outside my place, then back again. I knew where he would get his equity, it would come from one or more of those various private and government funding agencies that abound in Canada.  I took an early lunch at Carney's, a railroad car where I would celebrate minor victories with a split &  grilled red hot and a side of chili fries, best in the valley. 

Remember one of my rules;  reward yourself often.


This changed everything. We now, in theory, had the budget for Travel Day.  And if the exchange rate favored the U.S., it could conceivably mean our American money would be worth maybe 14 cents more on the dollar.  Which meant that $400,000 US would be worth $464,000, almost half a million if the U.S. dollar doesn't fall anymore.  

If we still had that $400k.

After my excitement died down I began to analyze exactly where we were.  On paper it looked damn good.  But I had emailed my $400k man a few weeks ago and he had not returned our email. My friend who knows him said he sometimes does that.  Privately it worried me.  I never told Shirley or anyone.  I fell into that mode of "better no news than bad news" when it came to the $400k man.   I re-read his email, particularly one phrase;  "I can probably find the rest". 

What did that imply; will he do it? 
Will he consider it? Is he going to DO IT??

You're probably wondering why I so quickly left behind the good news to dwell more on the possibility of bad news.  Well, I'm not one to play with pop psychology and thinking positive or visualizing my goals, I'm a realist mixed in with a dreamer and an eternal optimist, although sometimes I use pessimism as a cover for optimism. Expect the worst and you won't be disappointed.


I majored in Psychology (encouraged by the lovely Crystal, a grad student four years older than me)  at Henry Ford College and was set to transfer to U. of Detroit.  But I dropped out and into the world of television but always joked that I knew enough about psychology to tell everyone else what their problem was.  So while everything sounded spectacular, there was just one hitch...

One word: experience. 

This is almost exactly what happened with my producer on Emperor of Mars after nearly one year of waiting to fund that movie for $5 million.  Since I was writer and director I was not directly involved in the financing of Emperor.  Like Shirley is now, I was the one who waited for the good news that we have our funding.  We had a similar deal, the majority would come from the U.S. and the balance would come from tax incentives in Alberta (Alberta is the only province to call it's credits "incentives" as it's the most American of provinces and refuses to use the word "tax" anything.)

And the funding came close until, and this is something I can only speculate on, the U.S money fell out.  And the previous year Emperor was nearly funded when the financing fell through again. In fact, Emperor had been the victim of 4 attempts;  one with an Academy winning director and three times with me.  And none of those had any involvement in the funding stage from me.  That's one of the reasons why I am producing Travel Day. 

Because I want to know everything that happens on this movie. 

Every detail from the proposal on to the release.  Now I was somewhat in the same position, except this time I was the producer,  I was the one who knew what was going on, hopefully to do what needed to be done and finally, to get this movie made.  Sensing a backup plan, I had already contacted several other potential investors and Hank, the presales producer who could presell to Italy and France, which could make up the difference. 

But at the end of the day, I was going to relax in the comfort of acceptance.  And I would definitely call Manitoba next week.  I called Shirley to tell her rather than email it.  She was totally excited and said she had a feeling we would be doing this in Canada.  And it took us less than 3 months to get here. But I didn't feel we were there yet,  that there is still a lot of work to make everything go right and that there will be bumps ahead. Big ones.

Regardless, it was a good day for us.

Blog 12: The Writer/producer, the Director & the Big Breakup

It was not going well. I was getting frustrated, Shirley was getting frustrated and upset. 

I admit I am not the easiest person to work with when it comes to my screenplays. It comes from years working with more of the bad people than the smart ones. Like Amy the anti-Christ I described in blog 10. Unfortunately it led to some serious arguments  And if they wanted one word changed, there would be blood first. And not mine.

Enter Shirley. 

We had finally begun the next draft of the screenplay, with notes from her and my own notes.  We decided to sit down across from each other, each with our laptops. Shirley had brought muffins and coffee and it had become a routine for us before we started reworking the script. But after a few days it was becoming clear that there was some friction.  I was resisting some of her changes,  increasingly so. To her credit, she stayed there as I resorted to my "yeah, well, I've done 16 movies..." attitude.

And regardless of what I thought, my "16 movies" defense wasn't helping things. 

Nor was my producer hat which suggested two against one. The first few days were okay but each of us had different takes. Shirley's big on methaphors, she would want to show changes  with a character without words whereas I would want dialog.  It was clear our personal preferences were coming to the front. 

At one point Shirley suggested I put a strike-thru on some sentences, to which I replied sharply, "I don't use strike-thru", she said it just makes it easier to see what should be cut,  and I said I don't have that feature. This dragged into a huge argument as she tried to tell me where the command key was on my menu. I insisted it wasn't there. Shirley was frustrated as hell. Then I suddenly saw the strike-thru command and acted like I knew it was there all the time. I think she wanted to throw a phone book at me this time.  This became known as the "strike-thru gap".

After a few days, tension was gaining in both our meetings and our emailed notes. Email is a particular subject to me as I have learned over the years that misunderstandings can often occur within what someone intended and what the other person interpreted. I'm sure wars were accidently started by a few misunderstood emails. 

To her credit, Shirely maintained a professional demeanor, while I continued to use the "experience card" as my defense and reasoning. Finally it ended in an email (which I seem to have conveniently lost) from me saying that it was too difficult for me to continue as I felt her notes just didn't translate to me.  

This was what we called the Big Breakup. We continued trading emails,  but it was clear something had to change or Travel Day was over.  Shirley replied that  she still loved the project but that finally, she would not direct it. 

It was over. 

I was angry, and I think she was also. And for the next three days I was not a nice person to be around. But I do have one facet of my character that has some reasoning behind it. It is probably due to a few years of majoring in Psychology, an education I eventually quit for television. I can step outside of myself when I want to, and be brutally honest. I wondered how I could be so angry at Shirley, when all she was doing is offering her notes and suggestions.  It was her movie as much as it was mine. And I had to at least consider her ideas.

It didn't take long. I was wrong. 

I was angry not at her, but at me for pulling out the excuses, the experience, all of that.  And I knew I had done it often in the past on other projects.  But I also remembered that it was usually used against people who really didn't know what they were talking about, who would have two hour discussions about whether a character would say three words or four.  So I could let Travel Day fall by the wayside or I could try to change her mind. But it was one of the hardest things to do for me.

I finally composed an email that said just that,  I was wrong and I did want her to make Travel Day and that I think we could work this out. 

Shirley's response was quiet and apprehensive, she was willing to try again. The next time she showed up, I knew we were going to work better together - she had muffins and coffee. And it did work out, we hammered out a new draft where there were compromises on both sides and again,  respect for each other. And yes, we still have a laugh about "the Big Breakup" and the "Strike-thru Gap". 

People generally don't understand why creative types have such intense confrontations, sometimes resulting in people leaving the movie or the music album, or any other artistic endeavor. With writing, it begins when a writer finishes there story or screenplay. You've sat at that damn computer, facing a blank page and searching for ideas so that you can finish it. It's only you there, nobody else, at least for a spec script. It's your child, you brought those 100 pages to life where none existed before. Then, someone comes in and tells you that you did it wrong? 

See where I'm going? 

And that other party, be it a development exec or a producer or an actor... or Shirley, comes into what was a solitary artistic endeavor and begins to change it. And it's damn hard to want to change, or admit that it could be better. 

Are today's sitcoms better with 12 or 15 writers than I Love Lucy with 2 writers, a husband and wife?  You know the answer already. Our little breakup did some good things; it made me realize that Shirley had definite ideas that could be considered,  that we both would compromise when it mattered and again, that both of us could only make Travel Day better. We finished the rewrite and it was better. But now we reached a new stage of this partnership.

How to find the money to make our movie.



(Next: How do we find anyone who will give us $900,000)